The true history of earmarks

From the Center for American Progress, a chunk of a much larger piece by Scott Lilly:

Congressional Republicans have spent hours and hours on the House floor this year decrying earmarks, but they have spent far more time back in their offices crafting letters to ask for them. Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina led an effort that held up appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for nearly a week to protest earmarking. “I'm very proud of the actions that my conservative friends are taking on this House floor to hold the Democrats accountable for their slush fund, their secret earmarks and their pork-barrel projects,” he boasted. “And I urge the body to move in the conservative direction.”

The following week it was revealed that McHenry had written the Appropriations Committee in April requesting funding for the “Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree Project.” It was one of more than 10,000 requests sent to that committee by members of his party.

The “Spin Machine” has also succeeded in obscuring the fact that significant progress has been made by the new congressional majority in cleaning up the process by which earmarks are awarded. These include new rules adopted at the beginning of this Congress that:

* Prohibited members of Congress from using earmarks to reward or punish other members for their votes on matters before the House.

* Require disclosure of the name and address of any intended recipient, the purpose of the earmark, and whether the member has a financial interest in the organization or entity receiving the earmark or would otherwise benefit personally from the inclusion of the earmark.

* Require that all matters before a conference committee (including earmarks) must be subject to full and open debate and that a final version of a conference report must be voted on by a meeting open to all members of the conference committee, and that no item (including earmarks) may be added to the legislation after the conference committee has adjourned.

In addition, the new Congress took the following actions:

* Completely excluded all earmarks from the nine fiscal year 2007 appropriation bills that were enacted in January 2007

* Agreed to cut the amount of funding provided for earmarks in each of the fiscal year 2008 appropriation bills by 50 percent below the levels contained in the appropriation bills passed by the last Congress.

* Established a policy requiring the publication by the Government Printing Office of all letters requesting earmarks included in an appropriation bill prior to floor consideration of the bill.

An important additional reform attempted by the new Congress could not be implemented in the current fiscal year but is likely to be implemented next year. That reform would restore greater scrutiny of requested earmarks before their inclusion in appropriation bills.

The proposed reform would end the recent practice of Appropriation Subcommittees moving toward a policy of granting members a certain amount of money within each bill that they can use for what ever projects they deem to be appropriate. In many instances there is little vetting or review of these proposed earmarks by anyone other than the member who requested them and his immediate staff.

The Appropriations Committee had to postpone their plan to return to a system in which proposed earmarks are subjected to a review by committee staff as well as by the agency personnel managing the earmarked funds. This reform was postponed because of time constraints created by a delay in the deadline for submitting earmark requests and the need to move the appropriation bills in a timely manner. There will, however, be additional review of the earmarks already included in the bills before they are finally agreed to in conference committee.

The Appropriations Committee plans a much more complete review of all requested earmarks next year before any are included in the 2009 appropriation bills.

Thank you, Bob Novak, kind of

[Photo from TPMMuckraker]

Bob Novak is my hero. What a muckraker! I thank the Lord he's all over Patrick McHenry's earmark hypocrisy. The "kind of" refers to his complete disdain when he writes this week that "no one -- and we mean absolutely no one" reported Patrick McHenry's latest spanking (and this time by his own kind, 249-174):

Meanwhile, events during the last week of June demonstrated that the celebrated transparency in the House is a sham. Amendments to strike transparent earmarks are brought up for a floor vote, they are overwhelmingly defeated and the news media completely ignore the story. Searches of Lexis-Nexis and Google News suggest that no one -- and we mean absolutely no one -- has picked up on the story of Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and the embarrassing fight he lost to keep an earmark in his district.

Now, I know, I know, he was only bringing it up to daintily point out that the Democrats are not doing as good of a job as he obviously wants them to do. (Isn't his idealism cute!) But it was just so adorable of him to use the words "Patrick McHenry" and "embarrassment" in the same sentence that I'll forgive him for being so blogodensious, and so tremendously hypocritical in his criticism on one party's comparatively minor failings in comparison to the party he so blindly (and so profitably) supports.

And if absolutely no one picked up on it, how did he find out about it? Did he read about it here or here or here or here or here or here? Oops, I forgot all those media outlets don't exist. He must have been right there in the gallery of Congress to witness the smackdown.

Oh, P.S., Mr Novak, I scrolled down to your comments on Al Franken. Why does he "claim" to have raised 1.9 million while his Republican opponent "announces" his and the primary candidate "declares?"

Novak notices Pat

Bob Novak searched Google News and Lexis and discovered that no mainstream media wrote a word about Pat's earmark embarrassment. But he clearly thinks if it's not covered by the mainstream media, it's not been "picked up." Maybe he's right. What do you think? here's what he said:

Meanwhile, events during the last week of June demonstrated that the celebrated transparency in the House is a sham. Amendments to strike transparent earmarks are brought up for a floor vote, they are overwhelmingly defeated and the news media completely ignore the story. Searches of Lexis-Nexis and Google News suggest that no one -- and we mean absolutely no one -- has picked up on the story of Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and the embarrassing fight he lost to keep an earmark in his district.

I guess Crooks and Liars, and Government Executive dot com and the Lakeland Florida Ledger and Human Events dot com, and the Hill and yours truly are "no one -- and we mean absolutely no one"!

More earmark fallout for Pat

From Lakeland Florida's Ledger:

Garland: To U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., for winning his first victory in the House by ridding a spending bill of a wasteful pork-barrel project. Flake offered an amendment in late June to remove a $129,000 congressional earmark for an economic development initiative titled, "The Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree."

The earmark was put in the bill by Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and would have been used in Mitchell County, where employment has been drastically reduced by the closing of textile mills and furniture factories. The money would have doubled retail space for a gift shop where former factory workers sell products they've made - such as Christmas tree ornaments, handmade soap and pottery.

Yes, it's a worthwhile program. But does it belong in the federal budget, put there without committee hearings or debate? Flake didn't think so, and proposed the amendment to the 2008 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act. The final vote to remove the earmark passed, 249-174.

Last year, Flake proposed nearly 20 amendments to remove earmarks from bills. All his efforts were unceremoniously defeated.

McHenry losing face among more Republicans

Great analysis of McHenry's falling star in the Republican heavens at a right-wing site Human Events dot com:

The message was clear: Any member who opposes our corrupt system of favors and earmarks becomes persona non grata with the appropriations committee and his pork-barreling colleagues. It is, naturally, out of the question for such an uncooperative member to get his own earmarks. McHenry was humiliated but given a lesson on congressional power.

Here's more:

Earmarks: As the immigration bill in the Senate dominated the headlines, a fierce and nasty personal battle over earmarks had erupted on the House side. The message in the death of one particular earmark was that congressmen love their pork -- fight against our system and you don't get to participate.

1. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), as has become his custom, had proposed a series of amendments striking earmarks from the Interior and Financial Services appropriations bills. Each of these failed miserably, garnering at most around 100 votes. Flake's amendments to eliminate funding for subsidies to Washington's Barracks Row, "business incubators" in various regions, an urban planning center, a conference center and an airport commission, among others, lost by a huge margins.

2. But one anti-earmark amendment succeeded. The member punished for his fight against earmarks was Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a young conservative firebrand in his second term representing a district in Western North Carolina. McHenry had sealed the deal for himself with his fight to make earmarks more transparent, but he headed to the House floor to defend from one of Flake's amendments a $129,000 grant to the Perfect Christmas Tree project in Mitchell County, North Carolina.

3.Flake, stating openly that he expected this earmark-killing amendment to be defeated like all the others, acknowledged the poor economic conditions in Mitchell County, but held firm that need for federal intervention was dubious. "If this project is [already] successful, does it still need taxpayer assistance?" McHenry spoke of First Lady Laura Bush's support for the program, even adding to the record a feel-good USA Today piece about the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree Initiative.

4. Financial Services Chairman Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) was full of irony when he rose in support of McHenry's earmark, chiding him for finally finding an earmark he liked. Serrano said that he realized that McHenry was attempting to help his struggling district. But Serrano's tongue-in-cheek support did little good for McHenry or the other North Carolina congressmen defending the Perfect Christmas Tree. It took McHenry very much by surprise when Flake's amendment passed by a large margin, 249 to 174, with support from more than 140 Democrats who had never previously dreamed of voting against any earmark.

5.The message was clear: Any member who opposes our corrupt system of favors and earmarks becomes persona non grata with the appropriations committee and his pork-barreling colleagues. It is, naturally, out of the question for such an uncooperative member to get his own earmarks. McHenry was humiliated but given a lesson on congressional power.

Lay arraigment postponed

From the Charlotte Observer:

Gaston County

Arraignment of former McHenry worker continued

GASTONIA

Michael Aaron Lay, the former campaign worker for Rep. Patrick McHenry who was indicted on two counts of election fraud, appeared in court Monday. Lay's arraignment in Gaston County Superior Court was continued to Aug. 6 to give his attorney, Thom Goolsby, time to review the prosecution's files on the case, which he received Monday, Goolsby said.In May, a grand jury indicted Lay, 26, because of questions about whether he had legal residence in North Carolina when he registered to vote and cast a ballot in McHenry's primary election. McHenry, R-N.C. and from Cherryville, prevailed in a contentious GOP runoff by about 85 votes and went on to become, at 29, the youngest member of Congress.

Goolsby has denied the charges against Lay.

Lay, who graduated from the University of Tennessee law school in May, is living in Raleigh and working on Bill Graham's gubernatorial campaign. -- amy rainey

Slow week

This week will probably be slow news-wise. It will definitely slack off here at Pat Go Bye Bye. I'll be off-line from today through Thursday so I'm leaving it up to monkeywrencher and micandacam to pick up the slack! Or, take a vacation, too!

See you after the 4th!